RTP #39 Featuring Special Guest Wes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk

Since I have re-entered the trading market, it only stands to reason that I should resurrect my Rockie Trading Post series.  The normal setting for these posts will be multiple traders, just because it's not really my forte writing trade posts.  Night Owl and Dimebox Nick can write a trade post and make it read like a George Orwell novel that you just can't put down.  I don't have that kind of talent, so I will be normally be combining them into supersized posts.  However, in this case, the amount of cards that Wes sent me are a supersized post in and of itself.  I didn't take a photo of the enormous stack of cards that Wes sent, but another blogger took a photo of his stack from Wes.  Basically, just picture Rockies instead of Giants (something we all should do anyway) and you know how much I received from Wes.  There were a lot of doubles for me, but I don't care one bit because Wes added a lot to my collection.  Let's take a look at some of the newest Rockies to enter the Quarry.

Let's start off with our "Todd Helton Card of the Post" which is a card that I was shocked that I did not have, the 2007 Fleer base card.  I have no telling how many doubles, triples, and quadruples from this disappointing final set with the Fleer name, but somehow the Todd Helton card avoided me completely.  This one finished the team set for me and that is always a good thing.

One thing that has been around for a long time is gold parallels.  The top three are from Score's Gold Rush parallel from the mid 90's which I have always preferred to any other 90's parallel.  The Brent Mayne is actually the first Rockie that I have from Topps' inaugural gold parallel in the 2001 set.  The Scutaro of course is one of the "cascading urine" parallels from 2012 Topps.

Here we have a pair of Blake Street Bombers in their late 90s glory.  The Vinny Castilla 1998 Invincible Gems of the Diamond was one the few Pacific base cards that I still needed.  I am down to needing only 10 more from completing that company's entire base run.  The Dante Bichette is one of the hard to track down early chrome refractors.  Somewhere there is someone with a large hoard of Topps Chrome refractors from the 90s just sitting in their attic.  I hope they hit the market soon.

Here are a couple of parallels featuring still active former Rockies.  The Dexter Fowler is a purple from last year's Chrome set.  I actually didn't know about these purple refractors and didn't have them on my checklists until I saw this one.  Thank you for that.  The Matt Holliday is a rare parallel from the old Bowman Heritage line.  It is a black parallel #'d to only 52. 

Let's turn our focus to current Rockies.  Of course that will inevitably lead us to Troy Tulowitzki.  There are two recent inserts that had both been really difficult to track down (for a reasonable price anyway).  The first is one of the die cuts from 2013 Topps Chrome.  I'm not sure which of the three sets it is from without looking at the card number.  To me that says you have too many die cut inserts in this set.  The 1982 Topps throwback "In Action" insert is from the original revival of Topps Archives in 2012.  That is a set line that I would happily trade for a revival of Topps Total.

Here we have the potential future stars of the Rockies.  Tyler Matzek's card is from 2011 Topps Pro Debut.  He is actually the only Rockies player in that set that has not made an impact in the majors as of yet.  Of course the Rockies only had 4 players (Brothers, Arenado, and Rosario are the others) in that entire set, so it's not that odd.  Speaking of Arenado, here is his 2013 Topps Update chrome parallel.  I love parallels, but I absolutely HATE partial set parallels.  There are 11 Rockies in 2013 Topps Update, but only 2 of them are chromed and they have different card numbers as well.  It is very annoying.

Let's finish up the non-hit section of this post with what I like to call "Good Justin/Bad Justin"  Good Justin who represents things like purple refractors, gold parallels, and the final card in a team set is from 2004 Upper Deck Vintage.  It is the only Upper Deck Vintage set that did not directly steal their design from Topps...this one seems to have been stolen from Fleer.  Bad Justin, who represents things like partial parallels, cards with urine waterfalls, and redundant die cut insert sets, is from the 2004 flagship Upper Deck set.  I think you may see these guys again, because I intend to incorporate these two cards into a new review system for sets.

These two relics and one auto added to my Mountain to Climb in 2014.  The 2005 Donruss Champions Juan Uribe is my first relic for him and brings me up to 28 unique Rockie player relics leaving me 22 short of my goal and the 2009 Upper Deck Garrett Atkins is my tenth relic of his and 141st overall Rockies relic leaving me 59 short of that goal.  The Kevin Ritz auto is from 1996 Leaf Signature which was one of the first certified autograph sets.  Ritz is my 44th unique Rockies player certified autograph leaving me only 6 short of completing that goal.  Finally, the 2004 Bowman Sterling Chris Nelson is both an autograph and a relic although I only count it as an autograph for my goal purpose.  Nellie brings my total number of Rockies autos up to 76 and leaves me 24 short of that goal.



I can't thank Wes enough for this package.  Even though I only needed about 5-10% of the cards that Wes sent me, it was so much fun going through them that it didn't matter how may I needed.  If there are any Rockies collectors out there that would also like to benefit from Wes's generosity.  I am more than happy to pay it forward.  Just give me a holler.





Thanx for reading.